Friday, February 25, 2005

US-Russian agreement on missile exports

According to this article from SanDiego.com, the US and Russia have signed an agreement which calls for information sharing on the exports of shoulder held missiles to third world countries. "Information sharing", yet no ban. How surprising. Wonder how many of those US supplied shoulder fired missiles the Taliban have been using in Afghanistan? (Just in case you didn't know, the CIA supplied Bin Laden and his friends with all sorts of military equipment and know how when they were "freedom fighters" against the Soviets)

Of note, Boese said, is the absence of a commitment by either Washington or Moscow to halt the exports.
The United States began selling its Stinger shoulder-fired missile to foreign countries in 1982. The CIA secretly transferred an estimated 2,000 to Afghanistan mujahedeen rebels in the mid-1980s, and they were used to down hundreds of Soviet helicopters and transport aircraft.
When the war against the Soviets ended in 1989, the CIA began offering to buy back the Stingers for as much as $150,000 apiece. In his book "Ghost Wars," author Steve Coll wrote that as recently as 1996 the CIA estimated there were about 600 Stingers still unaccounted for in Afghanistan.